Quotes and estimates on autopilot
This is one of the ten AI workflows in The Time Refund. You are reading it in full, reproduced exactly as it appears in the guide. The complete guide includes all ten recipes plus a fillable six-sheet workbook.
A quote is three decisions (what's the work, what's the price, when can you do it) wrapped in twenty minutes of formatting and pleasantries. You keep the decisions. The wrapper goes.
- 1
The input-straightening step, and for a lot of readers the most profitable page in this guide: get your prices into your pinned profile. Day rate, call-out, your usual line items, how you handle materials, VAT treatment, deposit terms. If your pricing currently lives in your head, this is the push to write it down; quoting from memory is where margin quietly dies.
- 2
After pricing a job, voice-note or type the raw facts:
▸ Promptcopy whole Turn this into a written quote using my prices and terms from my profile. Structure: what we'll do (plain English, short), what it costs (broken into labour and materials if I gave you both), what's included and what isn't, timing, how to accept, and my deposit and payment terms. Keep it to one page. Mark anything you assumed [in brackets]. The job: [your ramble. "Henderson, 14 Elm Road, rear fence replacement, 22 metres, two gates, remove old fence, £1,900 plus VAT, materials in that, three days, earliest start the 14th, usual 50% deposit"]
- 3
Check the brackets, check the numbers, paste into however you send quotes (email, PDF, your invoicing app). Ninety seconds.
- 4
The follow-up (where the money actually is, and almost nobody does it):
▸ Promptcopy whole It's been [5] days since I sent the attached quote and I've heard nothing. Draft a short follow-up: friendly, zero pressure, one useful line (e.g. the start date I mentioned is still free), easy to reply to. Under 60 words.Recipe 8 turns this into a system; for now do it by hand and watch what it does to your win rate.
Make it yours
Trades: keep a "small print" block (access, waste disposal, what happens when we find surprises) in your profile so every quote carries it. Services and consultants: same recipe, but the assistant structures a proposal (situation, what we'll do, what it costs, what happens next) instead of a job quote. Salon/clinic: package quotes for weddings and events work identically; put your packages in the profile.
Garbage prices in, garbage quotes out: if step 1 is skipped, the assistant fills gaps with plausible numbers, and plausible is dangerous in a quote. Never send a quote whose numbers you haven't looked at; the AI formats your pricing decision, it doesn't make it. And keep quotes boring: one page, plain words. If a client can't tell what they're paying for, the quote isn't finished.
Three real quotes have gone out this way and the time from "priced it in my head" to "quote sent" is under five minutes.
That's one of ten recipes. The full guide has all ten, plus the workbook.
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